Union, Tiremaker Settle Long, Angry, Vocal Dispute

The United Steelworkers union and Bridgestone-Firestone Inc. said Tuesday they had reached a tentative agreement to end their 27-month dispute, one of the nation's nastiest labor spats in years.

Details were not released by either side, and the union said it will reveal them only to its members before they vote on the contract in coming days.

The deal also has some loose ends. "There are still some things on the table that we can't live with," said Randy Gordon, an official with the union in Decatur.

"It is a great comeback for the steelworkers and the rubber workers, because nobody gave us a chance of getting to this point," said Ray Abernathy, a Washington-based consultant who has helped direct the steelworkers' campaign against the firm, an arm of Bridgestone Corp., the world's largest tiremaker.

About 4,000 workers at plants in Des Moines; Oklahoma City; Akron, Ohio; Noblesville, Ind., and Decatur struck the Japanese company in July 1994 after the firm balked at a contract signed by other major tiremakers.

But the firm quickly punched back and hired 2,300 replacements. Six months later, it said they were permanent hires, a step that drew an angry rebuke from Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

"It is exceedingly unusual for a foreign company to behave as a subpar corporate citizen," Reich said at the time.

On Tuesday, Reich said the administration was pleased to hear of a settlement to "this long and bitter dispute."

Indeed, the strike divided families and communities as the firm kept up production with the replacements and 1,300 union members who crossed the picket lines.

Out of strike pay and fearing it would be shut out of the factories, the United Rubber Workers, led by the Decatur local, returned to work on the company's terms 10 months after the strike began. Fatally bruised by the confrontation, the 60-year-old union merged with the steelworkers in 1995.

After talks between the union and company failed, the steelworkers stepped up a nationwide boycott this year. As a result of its efforts, 31 communities, including Atlanta, agreed not to buy the tiremaker's products. Similarly, the Saturn division of General Motors Corp. agreed to allow customers to swap the standard-equipment Bridgestone-Firestone tires for others.

"It was a stalemate, a situation where both sides were injured by the ongoing dispute. I was wondering how long it would take," said Bruce Nissen, a labor expert at Indiana University Northwest in Gary.

"Even with enormous resources and many people," he said, the union had trouble determining its impact on the company.

Trevor Hoskins, a spokesman at the company's Nashville, Tenn., headquarters, said the company had not suffered from the union's efforts. "Our market share and our sales have improved in the last two years. And now we have record sales," he said.

All but 40 of the strikers have returned to their jobs, according to Hoskins. For the last two years, the company has imposed its contract proposal, which lowered wages for new hires to $12 an hour from $17, created 12-hour rotating shifts, required workers to pay for a portion of their health-care costs for the first time and pinned pay hikes to productivity increases.